In Happy Christmas, Anna Kendrick is the Best at Being the Worst

Uncomfortable-silence auteur Joe Swanberg has made a career of testing how much falseness you can strip out and still have a movie. What if people on-screen talked like people off it, and if their moments of realization — this is the person I love! — worked out about as well as the ones your friends dish about over drinks?

Now, with hits like last year's Drinking Buddies and the new Happy Christmas, Swanberg is testing whether a movie with so much real life can move a crowd. Drinking Buddies soared, but for all its beer-burped non sequiturs, it was powered by beautiful stars sparking up against one another. But those stars seemed of our earth, even Olivia Wilde in a career-best performance.

Grand in its own way, Drinking Buddies even managed to commit a classic Hollywood sin. Its lovesick brew-bro Luke (Jake Johnson) chased dream-girl Wilde, neglecting his long-term love — and since she was no less a catch than Anna Kendrick, the Broadway/Pitch Perfect firecracker, he wasn't always easy to feel for.

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Luke was lucky to have Kendrick, but now she's lucky to have Swanberg. Happy Christmas is a collaborative showcase that thrums with Kendrick's flighty rhythms — and it, too, soars.

Happy Christmas is slighter even than Drinking Buddies, more original in its shape, and interested in observing a wider range of broke-ass creative types. This time, it's not about some beardo facing the problem of too many beauties — it's about Kendrick as one of those Generation Awkward types, who at 27 is only just starting to feel her habits and quirks coalesce into something like an adult self.

After a bad breakup, Jenny hightails it from Brooklyn to Chicago to crash in the wondrous tiki bar basement of the house her brother (Swanberg himself) shares with his wife (Melanie Lynskey) and toddler son (Swanberg's own kid). Jenny's a bit self-involved, god-awful at being alone and quick to start talking through her problems to anyone who may or may not be listening. She, too, is a particular type: the nervous, means-well narcissist always this close to growing into someone reliable.

Her first night in town, she hits a party with a pal played by Lena Dunham and gets stupidly drunk. Dunham is all Midwestern nice in the first of her several hilarious scenes. Lugging Jenny from the party, she must say "I'm sorry" a dozen times, each with moment-specific sincerity.

The movie is packed with minor incidents, all fresh, compelling and funny. It also boasts two lengthy scenes that are touched with something greater. The first involves the three women having a drink at that basement bar. Kelly, Lynskey's character, considers Jenny too irresponsible to be much help with the baby, but she would like to be able to trust her — and maybe to get back to work on her second novel. Jenny and Carson, Dunham's character, both a couple years younger, try to win Kelly over and loosen her up. Eventually, the talk spills out, a lengthy, frank discussion about the joy and loneliness of being a stay-at-home mom, and of how it might feel to put your undomestic ambitions on hold for years at a time. There are more laughs and insights here than you'll get in a day's worth of blog reading on the same subjects.

The second scene is a queasy first date Jenny has with Kevin (Mark Webber), a pot dealer. She sits on his couch, not sure if it's a date or not — officially, she's there to buy drugs. He wanders out of our view to make her a drink, and Swanberg's camera stays on Kendrick, who fidgets, poses, starts to pull off her coat but then thinks better of it. Eventually, Kevin returns, and Jenny works up gumption enough to ask if maybe they should get high together. In the same long shot, they both light up, and slowly Kendrick's uptightness loosens. They laugh. They slump into one another. They get lost in the music, the things they say dissolving into meaninglessness. They make out.

It feels like watching life but not in some detached, dogmatic, strip-away-the-fun, indie-flick way. It's watching life's best and most revealing parts.

Alan Scherstuhl is film editor and writer at Voice Media Group and its film partner, the Village Voice. VMG publications include LA Weekly, Denver Westword, Phoenix New Times, Miami New Times, Broward-Palm Beach New Times, Houston Press, Dallas Observer and OC Weekly>.